Yesterday's Gone: Season Three (THE POST-APOCALYPTIC SERIAL THRILLER)

against the Black Pieces.”
    “The Black Pieces?”
    “Yes,” the Indian nodded. “The Black Pieces, The Darkness, The Void, The Oblivion, The Wicked Iniquity of Nothing, and The Limbo — it has more names across more universes than there are grains on your beaches or stars in your sky. The Black Pieces,” the Indian continued, “are the opposite of me.”
    “So, what are you?”
    “We, The Darkness and Us, started out the same. We are Light. We are Life, Creation, and We are the Infinite Possibility of All. But we can also be tainted and turned into The Darkness. It destroyed one realm we lived in. So our children sent us out in vials, in hopes that we might be found and bring Light back into being.”
    Luca shuddered. His itchy burny was back, even if it was only in his mind. He was confused. He’d heard people say the monstrous things that had been attacking them were aliens. But the Indian was describing it so differently. Like they were these forces, rather than actual physical alien beings.
    “Why can’t you fight the Black Pieces?”
    The Indian shocked Luca with a long fit of laughter before he said, “I can fight the Black Pieces, and I do .” He looked down at Luca, his hand still resting on the boy’s shoulder. “I’m fighting The Black Pieces right now by standing here speaking with you. However, I am but a part, a small part against the many. We need to find the vial to become stronger — to multiply as The Darkness has.”
    The Indian dropped to his knee, then set his pipe on the porch and held Luca’s eyes. “You will do something about it, Luca. Because you are strong, and because you are brave, even if you do not yet see it. But I am spread too thin to win this war. I am not really here,” the Indian waved his hands up and down his body. “At least not like you see me. No more than the rainbows in the sky which led you to a father from another world. I am but a residual of the Light passed from the Luca of one world to the Luca in another. I am inside you, but I’m not strong enough alone.” He pat Luca on the back. “I need, we need to get the vial.”
    “Or what?”
    “Or the world will be plunged forever into Darkness. And I, and all the people you know here, will be consumed by, and become part of, the Darkness.”
    Luca had a million more questions that he wanted to ask, but then the Indian said, “Not now. Now is time to wake up.”

    * * * *

CHAPTER 2 — Boricio Bishop Part 1

    Dunn, Georgia
    Boricio’s Compound
    March 31, 2012
    FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT…

    Boricio Bishop ran his hands over his bald head as he watched Charlie appear in the doorway.
    Every part of Bishop bristled as his doppelganger, Asshole Boricio, welcomed Charlie like his long-lost brother.
    Something’s wrong. How the hell did he get out of his cell?
    Did he escape?
    If so, how many bodies did he leave behind?
    Boricio felt a sudden danger he couldn’t define, as though it singed his skin with its flames, though he wasn’t sure where the fire was. He had to be careful how he handled the Charlie situation. This other Boricio was a loose canon, and while Boricio had been able to handle nearly any situation life threw his way, he wasn’t sure he could handle the him from another world — the him who seemed all id, no restraint. Asshole Boricio had never been adopted by Will, and had falsely learned that destroying everything around him was the best way to understand himself better.
    He wouldn’t think twice about getting down and bloody to protect his own.
    “Well,” the Asshole Boricio said, “get the fuck in here and make yourself at home!”
    Charlie smiled, sort of, then stepped inside the house, casting his eyes across the room as though he were taking it all in for the first time, almost with the same look as if he were observing a huddle of strangers he’d never seen before.
    He barely glanced at Callie, which struck Boricio as bizarre, especially after what he’d seen passing between the two of them on the cell monitors the night before.
    Asshole Boricio led Charlie to the dining room table, then pulled out a chair and gestured for him to sit. “I imagine you couldn’t find any open drive-thrus on your way over here, Chucky Fuck Stick, so you want one of Miss Mary’s pancakes to powder your gut?” He nodded toward Mary, standing by the bottom stair, shoulders tensed and arms wrapped around her daughter. “They’re not as good as Boricio’s World Famous Flapjacks,